PHILADELPHIA — Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren was said to be close to firing Peter Laviolette last season, but thought better of it over the offseason.

“Paul thought Peter deserved another chance,” said one organizational source.

That chance lasted three regular season games. Laviolette was dismissed as head coach this morning and will be replaced by his top assistant coach, organizational veteran Craig Berube. Assistant coach Kevin McCarthy was also relieved of his duties, with holdover John Paddock and player development staffer Ian Laperriere now serving as Berube’s assistants.

Holmgren made the call after the Flyers’ 2-1 defeat to the Carolina Hurricanes Sunday, a game in which they were outshot 34-18. That came on the heels of a 4-1 defeat in Montreal Saturday. It is the second-fastest firing in NHL history, dating to Detroit’s Bill Gadsby after two games in 1969. More recently, the Chicago Blackhawks replaced Denis Savard after a 1-2-1 start to the 2008-09 season.

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“On making this change at such an early part of the season, I can go back a little bit to last year and my concerns on how the team played,” Holmgren said. “Looking back, it was a lockout, shortened year, we had a lot of injuries ... I thought it was important that Peter had another shot with a training camp. And some of the additions we made this summer were good additions in Ray Emery, Vinny Lecavalier and Mark Streit. I thought there was some excitment about our team going into training camp. And right from Day 1 at training camp I was concerned about it; about how the team looked.

“Oh-and-3 is 0-3 and we still have a long way to go in terms of the season. But it was more about how the team played. It was unacceptable. We didn’t look like a team at all.”

Berube, 48, started as a young enforcer with the club in the late 1980s. He went on to excel as a defensive forward, playing 17 NHL seasons with five different teams, including two stints with the Flyers.

Afterward, Berube signed as a player for the Flyers’ top minor league team, the Phantoms, and after a short stint was elevated to player-coach in Jan. 2004. He went on to become a Flyers assistant coach, then the Phantoms head coach for the 2007-08 seasons before again taking an assistant’s role with the Flyers.

“Craig is one of the smartest hockey guys I’ve ever been around,” Holmgren said. “He demands respect. He holds people accountable. He’s a no BS kind of a guy. He has some work to do. He understands that.

“Things have to get better and they will.”

Berube called the promotion, “a great honor. ... I’ve always been a Flyer in my mind.”

Laviolette replaced the fired John Stevens early on in the 2009-10 season and wound up leading the club to the Stanley Cup finals before losing to the Chicago Blackhawks in six games. He had led them back to the playoffs the next two seasons, but missed the playoffs after a league lockout last season.

“We expect to make the playoffs and we expect to win,” Holmgren said. “Sometimes that’s the way the business goes. I’d be remiss to not thank Peter Laviolette for what he brought to the organization over the last three-plus seasons. I think Peter did a good job. He’s a good coach ... but things weren’t going well.”

Laviolette first was a head coach in the league with the New York Islanders, taking over a moribund franchise and leading it back to the playoffs. He would move on to Carolina and took the Hurricanes to a Stanley Cup title in 2006.

He was not immediately available for comment Monday. But club chairman Ed Snider was. Asked about his club’s 38 years since their last Stanley Cup championship under Fred Shero, and their prolific history of needing to hire 15 head coaches since then, Snider said, “The bottom line is we work our ass off to win and we have won more than our fair share, but we haven’t won Cups. But we have been in the finals for the Cup many times.

“If you really want me to get into details, I think we got screwed several times,” Snider added. “But it wasn’t that long ago that we were in the finals against Chicago, and everybody saw ‘the goal.’

“These things happen to us. Sometimes I say, ‘Somebody is home sticking pins in a doll somewhere.’”